FINE ARTS
Aesthetics of intimacy
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`Here is a serious and pain-staking study of the shringara tradition in poetry and paintings, the latter confined to miniatures... '
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"THIS is a book about romantic moments", proclaims the author in the opening sentence, "heart-throbbing moments, soul-stirring moments, enchanted moments, ... moments alive with passion and radiant with emotion, ... sensual moments", and so it runs on for close to 100 words. When the same sentence is reproduced verbatim in the blurb, one feels that the book will be long on rhapsodies and short on substance.
Happily, these fears are groundless. Here is a serious and painstaking study of the shringara tradition in poetry and paintings, the latter confined to miniatures, a mode more suited to depicting the intimacy and evanescence of love than murals or large canvases.
Oral in origin, Indian poetry was a performance art in which everyone participated, be it in havelis or courts or temples. The author traces its development over an extensive time span, distinguishing three streams: ancient love poems from the First Century onwards in Prakrit, the language of the people; the formal and courtly verse in Sanskrit favoured by royalty and the urban elite; and Tamil Sangam poetry pre-dating these and distinct from them but intermingling with the Prakrit tradition.
In all three languages, the love lyrics are brief, working through suggestive situations, motifs and extended metaphors. For instance, a tryst at sunset is implied in the following:
When can we meet alone (he asked)
She couldn't answer
with so many around
but looked at him and
closed the petals of the lotus in her hand.
While the protagonists of Prakrit poetry are farmers and hunters, merchants and travellers, those of Tamil poetry are aristocratic, with the heroic attributes of bravery, compassion and generosity; and the heroines, unlike their Northern counterparts, are chaste and highly cultured. One sings so sweetly that the elephant in a neighbouring field is quite overcome, and the songs of others are heard by their lovers in faraway cities.
Sangam poetry is robustly secular. The hero has no religious or caste identity, and there is none of the lofty moralising that is the staple of Sanskrit literature where class distinctions are so ingrained that, in drama, the women and the hoi-polloi spoke in Prakrit, and Sanskrit was confined to men and the nobility. Early Sanskrit verse, more suited to epic or metaphysical discourse, lacked the earthy effervescence of lyrics in the other two languages and though shringara rasa was undoubtedly important, it was constantly undercut by the ideal of renunciation.
Amaru's verse is closer to the Prakrit tradition in its uninhibited sexuality, whereas Kalidasa's is more refined, working obliquely through nature analogies in which the song of the peacock echoes the lover's lament and the passionate woman is a yakshi, a tree-spirit, overflowing with life-giving sap.
Svadhinapatika Nayika, Kalighat, late 19th Century, Collection: Author.
With two seminal works, the Bhagavata Purana and Jayadeva's Gita Govinda, the love of Radha and Krishna is elevated to a cult and becomes one of the great themes of literature, and later of miniature painting. In the 10th canto of the Purana, describing the ras lila of Krishna and the gopis in Vrindavan, Radha appears fleetingly. But in the Gita Govinda she takes centre-stage and humanises Krishna who becomes the prototypical lover, pleading, passionate, despairing. "Leave lotus footprints on my bed of tender shoots, ... /Let my place be ravaged by your tender feet... "
Here Radha is no longer the cardboard figure of the earlier poems. By turns jealous and impetuous, seductive and coy, she stands in a one-to-one relationship with Krishna and their passion, echoed in the sun and the clouds, bird-calls and flowering trees, acquires cosmic dimensions. Inspired, it is said, by the real-life romance between himself and his beautiful wife Padmavati, Jayadeva created an enchanted world, teeming with life, richly evocative in colours and imagery. Undoubtedly one of the great love poems in world literature, it gave birth to the cult of Bengali Vaishnavism and was the mainstay of Pahari and Rajasthani art. An entire dance form, the Manipuri, grew out of it, a fact the author has not mentioned.
Dehejia deals with the bhasa or vernacular poets at length, particularly Vidyapati, who writes entirely from Radha's viewpoint, the old Gujarati classic Vasanta Vilasa which stands outside the Sanskrit tradition, and the Rasikapriya of Keshavdas which tells several love stories, providing painters with a storehouse of narratives and motifs. This comprehensive survey ends with descriptions of Sufi poetry, the poetry of the seasons and ragamala.
Coming to miniature painting, "visual poetry" as the author calls it, he is at pains to show that its source was not the Persian tradition as we think, but the much older canonical texts of the Buddhists and the Jains. These, showing iconic figures painted on palm leaf and bound between painted wooden covers, are its true precursors. Certain Persian elements are evident in Jain manuscripts, particularly the tile patterns of local mosques copied in the borders. Horsemen derived from Turkoman paintings adorn one edition of the Kalpasutra in this way, showing that Indian artists adopted whatever suited them and rejected other Central Asian conventions such as the high horizon.
The miniatures, sumptuously reproduced, are the highlight of the book. There are 130, divided into sections theme wise, the oldest dated 1451 from the Vasanta Vilasa, the latest, a 20th Century Mithila painting. A descriptive paragraph and often some lines of verse from sources as varied as the Gita Govinda, Surdas, Old Gujarati, a thumri of Birju Maharaj are appended to each. The best-known love stories are depicted, including Bani Thani from Kishangarh, Nala Damayanti, Rupamati and Bazbahadur and a delightful Dhola Maru from Jodhpur with the camel literally skipping with joy as it bears the reunited lovers homewards on its back.
There are little-known Sufi paintings, and virtually every North Indian style is represented, from the bold, heavy-handed Western mode to the child-like Madhubani and the exquisite Kangra. In this abundance of goodies, two stand out for this reviewer. In a Kangra Miniature, a Nayika makes her way through the forest at night for a tryst with her lover, ignoring the snakes in her path, the pouring rain and the ominous night birds brooding in the darkness. Her fragile beauty contrasts strikingly with her steely determination, and the flowers in her patterned odhni link her to the blossoming trees as if in empathy. The other is a 19th Century Kalighat painting in a minimalist mode. With broad, deft strokes and strong primary colours Krishna is shown massaging Radha's tired feet, an image of tender concern. This picture belongs to the author, who is the proud owner of more than half of this collection.
The book is, in fact, a one-man show, for Dehejia has written the text, described the paintings and even translated much of the poetry, adequately if not with the felicity of A.K. Ramanujam or Linda Hess, quite an achievement for someone who is a practising physician!
The book production, however, leaves something to be desired. There are typos — "Sultant" on p.127 instead of Sultanate among others — and signs of carelessness. The descriptions of the two paintings on p.126 have been inadvertently switched and the picture on the back cover is ascribed to Bikaner in the blurb and to Jaipur on p.4. And when, pray, did Hala reign? From AD 20-40 (p.23) or in the Fourth Century (the blurb)? The paintings also suffer from paucity of information. Their size is never given nor the medium used, and the delectable cover picture is dismissed in just four words — "Kangra, late 18th Century". Surely this is laconism carried to extremes. Above all, that essential reference tool, the Index is missing. Even so, this remains a little gem of a book, a must-have for lovers of miniature art.
ZERIN ANKLESARIA
The Flute and the Lotus: Romantic Moments in Indian Poetry and Painting, Harsha Dehejia, Mapin Publishing, Rs. 1950.
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